Private sector axes more jobs amid Reeves’ tax and wage pressures Economics The UK’s private sectors culled jobs for the seventeenth consecutive month in February led by a significant drop in the services sector as businesses were still digesting the impact of Labour’s 2024 Autumn Budget. The latest flash Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) from S&P Global described the rate of job shedding in February as at a [...]
Unemployment hits post-pandemic high as wage growth slips Economics The labour market continued to loosen in the final quarter of last year, official figures show, with wage growth easing and unemployment climbing steadily higher. The rate of joblessness crept up to 5.2 per cent between October and December, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the highest level since early 2021 and slightly [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Unemployment rises; Debenhams’ £35m raise Markets Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. The UK unemployment rate has risen again this morning, with fresh data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing the rate had surged to 5.2 per cent in the three months to December 2025. This was up from 5.1 per cent in the latest [...]
AI jobs defy hiring slump as tech talent cashes in January 7, 2026 With redundancies rising and hiring freezes spreading across much of UK PLC, the tech corner of the jobs market looks to be moving steadily in the opposite direction. New data shows tech roles are not just surviving the wider slowdown, but actively raising salary growth in 2026. Jobs platform Totaljobs found median advertised pay saw [...]
Whitehall pledges skills drive as AI wounds UK’s job market September 23, 2025 The UK government is seeking to strike a balance between the promise and the perils of AI, with ministers insisting they are preparing for a range of outcomnes as the technology reshapes the labour market. Kanisha Narayan, a junior minister at the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), said the administration was “monitoring data [...]